Fresh claims of suicide prayers anger Egypt's MPs

Monday 22 November 1999 20.52 EST
First published on Monday 22 November 1999 20.52 EST

Egyptian officials and media yesterday began a new round in their defence of EgyptAir and its pilots, following a report published by Newsweek claiming that the EgyptAir relief co-pilot, Gameel al-Batouty, was heard on the plane's voice recorder repeating a religious sentence 14 times before the ill-fated plane started a rapid nosedive towards the Atlantic ocean.

Unnamed US investigators speculated that repeating the Islamic phrase was another indication that Batouty, 59 and a father of five, deliberately brought down the plane to commit suicide.

The Egyptian transport minister, Ibrahim el-Demeiri, told angry members of a parliamentary committee yesterday that Batouty did repeat a religious sentence several times, but that was after facing a sudden situation which made him seek God's help.

"After Batouty sat on the pilot's seat he said 'In the name of God, I put my faith in God [ Bism Allah, Tawakalto A'la Allah ]'. This is a sentence which we Egyptians say at the beginning of doing everything. When a state of panic occurred in the cockpit, the sentence of 'I put my faith in God' was repeated several times."

Mr Demeiri added that it "might take one year or more" to find out the exact cause of the October 31 crash of EgyptAir flight 990, which killed all 217 people on board.

He also denied differences between Egyptian and US investigators, saying the plane's voice recorder, which tapes the conversation between pilots in the cockpit, was transcribed by experts from both countries.

He added that Major General Abdel-Fatah Kato, the head of Egypt's civil aviation authority who left the US late last week to lead the Egyptian team, asked him to provide a psychiatrist and voice expert.

Speaking to members of the transport committee who met to discuss the crash, Mr Demeiri again vehemently denied US reports that Batouty might have deliberately caused the crash. He said: "Egyptian documents and information proved that this explanation was wrong."

He added that James Hall, director of the national transportation safety board (NTSB), also countered speculation on the suicide theory, "and apologised officially for that. He also stated that those responsible for the leaks [from the American side] will be held responsible."

Mr Demeiri lashed out at the US media, saying that reports on the contents of the voice recorder were "distorted".

He added that 11 working groups were being formed to investigate all aspects of the plane crash, and that Egyptian experts were included in all these groups. He said the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, was personally following the investigation "and he calls me every morning to give instructions on how to deal with the matter".

Egypt's state-owned television yesterday quoted a White House spokesman as denying that a conversation between Mr Mubarak and President Bill Clinton took place to delay a decision to turn the investigation from the NTSB to the federal bureau of investigation (FBI). However, an Egyptian spokesman was quoted by the television as saying that "contacts on other levels took place to delay this decision".

Turning the case over to the FBI would imply that a criminal act might have caused the crash.

The Egyptian foreign minister, Amr Moussa, also denied Newsweek claims that Egyptian experts working with their US counterparts did not initially exclude the suicide theory but were overruled by their seniors back home.

Mr Moussa emphasised that the Egyptian and US investigators working on the accident were only tackling technical aspects, "and we are not at all in the framework of criminal investigation".

Mr Moussa said the suicide theory was not the only one on the table, "there are many other possibilities and assumptions".

Six US investigators, mainly from the NTSB, arrived in Cairo on Friday to gather more information on the maintenance of the ill-fated plane and the background of the pilots. Egyptian sources said FBI officials were also in Cairo to carry out similar investigations.

After listening to Mr Demeiri, at least six MPs accused Israeli intelligence, Mossad, of being behind the crash, while others contemplated the theory that the plane was downed by a missile fired by mistake from a secret US naval base in the Atlantic.